MP vs Xeon

[dkopel]

I'd love to see a comparison between dual MP vs Xeon.
Has anyone compared dual MP vs Xeon for video editing using Premiere and After Effects?
If ASUS doesn't charge like a wounded bull for the PC-DL Deluxe - it seems like it could provide a nice setup!

 

[Mephistopheles]

Actually, given the current state of affairs, the Xeons tend to be the best choice, but it depends on budget. I'd suggest Dual MPs only if you really don't have the cash to go Xeon, because Xeons will probably give you very good peformance in video editing using premiere and After effects - even more so if you consider the new PC-DL, but we'll get to that later.

Dual MPs tend to have less efficient chipsets. Also, because of the arrival of the (probably very fast, but we haven't seen any reviews yet) of the 3.06Ghz Xeon with 1MB L3 cache (1.5MB L2+L3 cache), the whole Xeon line is costing less. It's still more expensive than the MPs, though. The motherboards aren't cheap either.

Now moving on to the Canterwood-based ASUS PC-DL: it looks awesome. Canterwood's memory controller is more up-to-date, as are its features. It will probably support non-ECC memory as well, which will make the platform that much cheaper. It sports AGP 8x, dual channel ddr333, and S-ATA. Looks like a powerhouse - and because it's based on Canterwood, it might be less expensive than the usual Xeon mobos. Consider, however, that it might also be limited to 4GB system memory, unlike typical Xeon mobos - but that might not be an issue to a typical dual-cpu enthusiast for a few years...

So if you're considering dual processors (or are just enthusastic about this idea! ), I'd say wait for the PC-DL to come out. Right now, dual Opterons are not a good choice for you, because their performance is somewhat limited in typical 32-bit workstation tasks, like THG itself concluded.

<font color=red><b>M</b></font color=red>ephistopheles

 

[Mephistopheles]

BTW, dkopel, I looked for reviews, but found only older reviews... So that's not really that useful...

<font color=red><b>M</b></font color=red>ephistopheles

 

[dkopel]

Heheh, you even managed to answer the question I forgot to ask, as to whether the ASUS board would operate in dual channel mode for the RAM!
Thanks for the tips, reviews of newer MP's vs Xeons are pretty thin on the ground!

 

[Mephistopheles]

Well, <A HREF="http://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=PC-DL Deluxe&langs=01" target="_new">this link</A> will take you directly to the PC-DL page, were you can get the specs for PC-DL (and drool a bit, too)

Anyway, they mention that you don't need ECC, but they actually don't say anything about dual-channel, but the Canterwood memory controller hub is capable of up to dual-channel DDR400, of course. So there is little if any doubt that this baby will support it... Anyway, if enough overclocking features present themselves, then I think this will be the best thing that ever happened to Intel dual processor machines for a while!... ASUS producing dual processor mobos for Intel platforms again...

<font color=red><b>M</b></font color=red>ephistopheles

 

[sjonnie]

Maybe you want to check out the reviews at <A HREF="http://www.gamepc.com/labs/" target="_new">http://www.gamepc.com/labs/</A>. They review plenty of dual processor systems, also with gaming benchmarks.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A> 😎 <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by sjonnie on 08/06/03 03:56 PM.</EM></FONT></P>